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WELCOME!

MOBILIZING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF

NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCIES

LEARNING FROM

THE MOST

ADMIRED

KNOWLEDGE

ORGANIZATIONS

IN THE WORLD

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COMPLEX ENVIRONMENTS:

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

• Driven by knowledge

intangibles rather than natural

resources, capital or low

skilled labour

• Economic performance based

on knowledge, technology and

learning

• Mobilising knowledge to add

value to goods and services

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CHALLENGES IN NUCLEAR ENERGY

• Fluctuating and unpredictable

energy prices

• Low oil prices ($28 a barrel) vs

high costs of nuclear power

• Unstable exchange rates and

interest rates for exporting nuclear

energy

• Use of best practice to share

knowledge and lessons learnt

across sector

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CHALLENGES IN NUCLEAR ENERGY

• Is it more important for nuclear

energy industry to pursue the latest

technology such as Generation III

reactors or develop its workforce to

share knowledge and expertise?

• How do leaders improve the human,

social and organisational capital of

the industry?

• How can the industry mobilize

knowledge quickly around

contamination and containment in

nuclear accidents such as

Fukushima?

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LESSONS LEARNT FROM LEADING

FIRMS IN COMPLEX ENVIRONMENTS?

• Focus on practices and real

life challenges

• Firms chosen have won

Most Admired Knowledge

Enterprises (MAKE) Awards

• Analyse international KM

practices

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ERNST & YOUNG (US)

• ‘Big 5’ consulting firm in 130

countries with 80,000

employees

• Selling knowledge and expertise

• 16,000 staff on Facebook

• Problem of dispersed

knowledge – need for ‘just-in-

time’ knowledge

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ERNST & YOUNG (US)

• Centre for Business

Knowledge (CBK) maintains

a repository of knowledge

• Use ‘Powerpacks’ with latest

client and industry info and

previous consultancy reports

• Retirement of baby boomers

creating challenge

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WORLD BANK

• Knowledge seen more powerful

than money in poverty reduction

• Desire to move from repositories

to CoPs

• Wish to engage with partners

and utilise combined knowledge

towards local solutions

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WORLD BANK - NIGERIA

• Email sent to CoP for advice on

national transport strategy

• Detailed responses from 11

countries in 24 hrs

• Reduced costs and speed up

strategy development

• Have used satellite technology

to enable video conferencing

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INFOSYS (INDIA)

• Rely heavily on overseas

business

• Realised knowledge and

expertise most valuable

resource

• Used Kshop to encourage

knowledge sharing

• Contribution rates low

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INFOSYS (INDIA)

• Introduced Knowledge Currency

Units (KCUs) as reward system

• Contributions rose significantly

• Unintended consequence was

employees saw KCUs as way of

making money rather than

openly sharing knowledge

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UNILEVER

(UK/NETHERLANDS)• CoPs are key to KM but linked to a key

‘Knowledge Domain’

• Champions to coordinate and mobilise

network

• Aim to encourage collaboration

geographically and across functional

boundaries

• Based on 4 principles: deliverables,

people, operations and leverage

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TOYOTA (JAPAN)

• New recruits get hands on

experience on production line

• Use quality circle forums – analyse

problems and performance

• Yokoten system – library of lessons

learnt from problems

• Suggestion screening system – type

any question on terminal

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TOYOTA (JAPAN) - PRIUS

• Hybrid car reached production in 15

months after trying out 80 engine

designs

• Contradictory viewpoints drive

experimentation and continuous

improvement

• Mantra “Never be satisfied!”

“There’s got to be a better way!”

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HONDA (JAPAN)

• Slogans such as “Theory of

Automobile Evolution” part of their

development of cars

• Allow engineers to play

• Eg. ‘Asimo’ robot developed that

may help other business areas

• Honda R&D provided all CEOs

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ROYAL DUTCH SHELL

(UK/NETHERLANDS)

• Use wikis to generate dialogue and

new knowledge

• Has replaced 300-500m archive

documents

• Has 40,000 registered users

• Users can talk directly to authors of

wiki content

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ROYAL DUTCH SHELL

(UK/NETHERLANDS)• 60% of staff will retire over next 8

years

• Shell Open University courses are

all on wikis

• 80% of technical staff are away from

home at any one time

• CoPs follow common interests and

across functional areas

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TATA CONSULTANCY

SERVICES (INDIA)• Optimises onsite IT consultancy with

offshore back office in India

• KM: People, Processes and

Technology

• PEEP forums – employee

engagement with senior managers

• PROPEL forums – 40 members

around a theme – quality circles

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COLLABORATION AMONG

NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCIES• Developing a Thinking Environment

(Nancy Kline, 2014)

• Thinking is a radical act (improves action)

• Listening with attention, respect and

fascination to others

• Asking incisive questions

• Giving everyone a turn to speak without

interruption

• Use of Thinking Pairs

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CONCLUSIONS

• Is KM purely about digital innovation

and CoPs?

• Need to address problem of ‘baby

boomer’ retirements in HE –

mentoring, coaching, wikis?

• How does one develop a shift from

single-loop to double lop learning in

the nuclear industry?

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CONCLUSIONS• Use of Nuclear Energy ‘YouTube’

channels for knowledge sharing –

similar to FutureLearn in academia?

• Knowledge sharing incentives – money

or relaxed CoPs with boundary

spanners?

• Creative tension – contradictory

viewpoints and figurative language?

• Wikis, blogs, social networking, big data

and virtual worlds?

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THANK YOU!